The proposed research has two principal objectives. First, in an attempt to extend existing knowledge about the development of communication skills, the proposed studies will investigate the development of listener competence during childhood. In particular, the studies will employ a referential communication task adapted from that of Glucksberg and Krauss, and will focus on children's developing abilities as listeners to deal effectively with messages which are initially unclear or ambiguous. The results of pilot studies using these procedures suggest that while older children's listening performances are generally quite adequate, young children exhibit striking deficits in these listening skills. Accordingly, the second major aim of the proposed studies will be to explore a variety of procedures for facilitating the development of young children's listening skills. More specifically, the impact of both modeling procedures and the introduction of various plans for effective listening on children's actual listener performances will be examined. The efficacy of these techniques will be assessed using a wide range of experimental materials, and in both immediate and delayed tests of listener performance. Thus, the proposed research, with its dual emphasis on extending basic knowledge about children's communicative abilities and testing procedures for facilitating the development of these abilities will, it is hoped, contribute significantly to knowledge about the development of communicative competence.